Architect Richard Naish’s first family home

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Richard Naish of RTA Studio won the Home of the Year 2015 with the design of a home for himself and his family in the Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn. However, this wasn’t his first stab at designing such a dwelling: the first home he designed for his family, just across Grey Lynn Park, was a finalist in our 2011 Home of the Year award.

Design Notebook

Occupying a double-sized site in a street of bungalows in Auckland’s Grey Lynn, Richard Naish and Andrea Hotere’s house is contemporary and respectful at the same time.

Richard Naish and Andrea Hotere’s home is more than a little mysterious from the street. Behind its intriguing public face, the home wraps itself around a courtyard, with the children’s bedrooms in a flat-roofed volume (above and above right) connected to the main part of the house through a combined living area and TV room. The idea is that, as the children grow older, there are places to gather as a family and also to do things individually. The home’s shape and easy connection to the outdoors mean that in good weather, the courtyard functions as a circulation area between the various rooms.

About the architect

Richard Naish designed this home for his wife Andrea and their three children, Jack, Alice and Holly. Before the home was built, they had already lived in the bungalow that previously occupied the site (once they decided to build anew, the old home was sold and moved off the property). Richard is a director of the Auckland firm RTA Studio, which has developed a reputation for desiging modern buildings that are sensitive to their city contexts (including the Ironbank building in Karangahape Road), skills he applied in the design of this house. Here, he utilises references to neighbourhood villas and bungalows – such as the pitched roof, oversized weatherboards and fretwork-inspired screens –but still produces a thoroughly modern family home.

Words by: Jeremy Hansen. Photography by: Patrick Reynolds.

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Seven-year-old Alice mugs for the camera in the courtyard, while Richard and Holly (4) play in the sandpit.

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Light filters through a screen featuring a laser-cut pattern abstracted from the fretwork of a nearby villa.

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The home sits a similar distance from the street as its neighbours and roughly echoes their rooflines, but is otherwise resolutely contemporary.

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A new take on the outdoor room, a space with a fireplace that opens to the courtyard on one side, with a screen offering privacy from the street on the other.

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A view from the outdoor room, with a screen filtering afternoon sunlight, into the home’s combined living and dining area and the timber-lined kitchen.

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Richard’s kitchen design was inspired by a kitchen from Andrea’s childhood, which had wood panelling and the same painting by her father, artist Ralph Hotere, on the wall (another of his works is above Jack’s head in the dining area).

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The kitchen workspace is mostly screened from view.

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Stairs leading to the main bedroom and lounge.

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The home wraps around a courtyard. The flat-roofed wing at left contains the three children’s bedrooms, while the linking space contains a combined living and TV room. Upstairs in the main wing is Richard and Andrea’s bedroom and adjacent living room.